Fire Sale

Not that I was jealous of Marcena. Certainly not. I was a modern woman, after all, and a feminist, and I didn’t compete with other women for any man’s affection. But Morrell and Love had the intimacy that comes from a long-shared past. When they started laughing and talking I felt excluded. And, well, okay, jealous.

A fight under one of the baskets reminded me to keep my attention on the court. As usual, it was between April Czernin and Celine Jackman, my gangbanger forward. They were the two best players on the team, but figuring out how to get them to play together was only one of the exhausting challenges the girls presented. At times like this it was just as well I was a street fighter. I separated them and organized squads for scrimmage.

We took a break at three-thirty, by which time everyone was sweating freely, including me. During the break, I was able to serve the team Gatorade, thanks to a donation from one of my corporate clients. While the other girls drank theirs, Sancia Valdéz, my center, climbed up the bleachers to make sure her baby got its bottle and to have some kind of conversation with its father-so far I hadn’t heard him do more than mumble incomprehensibly.

Marcena began interviewing a couple of the girls, choosing them at random, or maybe by color-one blonde, one Latina, one African-American. The rest clamored around her, jealous for attention.

I saw that Marcena was recording them, using a neat little red device, about the size and shape of a fountain pen. I’d admired it the first time I saw it-it was a digital gizmo, of course, and could hold eight hours of talk in its tiny head. And unless Marcena told people, they didn’t know they were being recorded. She hadn’t told the girls she was taping them, but I decided not to make an issue of it-chances were, they’d be flattered, not offended.

I let it go on for fifteen minutes, then brought over the board and began drawing play routes on it. Marcena was a good sport-when she saw the team would rather talk to her than listen to me she put her recorder away and said she’d finish after practice.

I sent two squads to the floor for an actual scrimmage. Marcena watched for a few minutes, then climbed up the rickety bleachers to my center’s boyfriend. He sat up straighter and at one point actually seemed to speak with real animation. This distracted Sancia so much that she muffed a routine pass and let the second team get an easy score.

“Head in the game, Sancia,” I barked in my best Coach McFarlane imitation, but I was still relieved when the reporter climbed down from the bleachers and ambled out of the gym: everyone got more focused on what was happening on the court.

Last night at di

Love had laughed. “I have a high boredom threshold. You know the series I’m doing for the Guardian on the America that Europeans don’t see? I have to start somewhere, and who could be more invisible than the girls you’re coaching? By your account, they’re never going to be Olympic stars or Nobel Prize wi

“In other words, just like the girls in South London,” Morrell had interrupted. “I don’t think you’ve got a world-beating story there, Love.”

“But going down there might suggest a story,” she said. “Maybe a profile of an American detective returning to her roots. Everyone likes detective stories.”

“You could follow the team,” I agreed with fake enthusiasm. “It could be one of those tearjerkers where this bunch of girls who don’t have enough balls or uniforms comes together under my inspired leadership to be state champs. But, you know, practice goes on for two hours, and I have an appointment with a local business leader afterward. We’ll be in the armpit of the city-if you do get bored, there won’t be a lot for you to do.”

“I can always leave,” Love said.

“Onto the street with the highest murder rate in the city.”

She laughed again. “I’ve just come from Baghdad. I’ve covered Sarajevo, Rwanda, and Ramallah. I can’t imagine Chicago is more terrifying than any of those places.”

I’d agreed, of course: I had to. It was only because Love rubbed me the wrong way-because I was jealous, or insecure, or just a South Side street fighter with a chip on her shoulder-that I hadn’t wanted to bring her. If the team could get some print space, even overseas, maybe someone would pay attention to them and help in my quest to find a corporate sponsor.

Despite her airy assurance that she had taken care of herself in Kabul and the West Bank, Love had wilted a little when we reached the school. The neighborhood itself is enough to make anyone weep-at least, it makes me want to weep. When I first drove past my old home two weeks ago, I really did break down in tears. The windows were boarded over, and weeds choked the yard where my mother had patiently tended a bocca di leone gigante and a Japanese camellia.

The school building, with its garbage and graffiti, broken windows, and two-inch case-hardened chains shutting all but one entrance, daunts everyone. Even when you get used to the chains and garbage and think you’re not noticing them, they weigh on you. Kids and staff alike get depressed and pugnacious after enough time in such a setting.

Marcena had been unusually quiet while we produced our IDs for the guard, only murmuring that this was what she was used to from Iraq and the West Bank, but she hadn’t realized Americans knew how it felt to have an occupying power in their midst.

“The cops aren’t an occupying power,” I snapped. “That role belongs to the relentless poverty around here.”

“Cops are on power trips no matter what force places them in charge of a community,” she responded, but she’d still been subdued until she met the team.

After she left the gym, I stepped up the tempo of the practice, even though several of the players were sullenly refusing to respond, complaining they were worn out and Coach McFarlane didn’t make them do this.

“Forget about it,” I barked. “I trained with Coach McFarlane: that’s how I learned these drills.”

I had them working on passes and rebounds, their biggest weaknesses. I forced the laggards under the boards, letting balls bounce off them because they wouldn’t go through the motions of trying to grab them. Celine, my gangbanger, knocked over one straggler. Even though I secretly wanted to do it myself, I had to bench Celine and threaten her with suspension from the team if she kept on fighting. I hated doing it, since she and April, along with Josie Dorrado, were our only hope for building a team that could win a few games. If they picked up their skills. If enough of the others started working harder. If they all kept coming, didn’t get pregnant or shot, got the high-tops and weight equipment they needed. And if Celine and April didn’t come to blows before the season even got under way.

The energy level in the room suddenly went up, and I knew without looking at the clock that we had fifteen minutes left in practice. This was the time that friends and family showed up to wait for the team. Even though most of the girls went home by themselves, everyone played better with an audience.

Tonight, to my surprise, it was April Czernin who picked up the pace the most-she started knocking down rebounds with the ferocity of Teresa Weatherspoon. I turned to see who she was showing off for, and saw that Marcena Love had returned, along with a man around my own age. His dark good looks were starting to fray a bit around the edges, but he definitely merited a second glance. He and Love were laughing together, and his right hand was about a millimeter from her hip. When April saw his attention was on Marcena, she bounced her ball off the backboard with such savagery that the rebound hit Sancia in the head.